Susan Elrod is chancellor at Indiana University South Bend, the largest regional campus of Indiana University (IU). She is an experienced biology professor, university administrator, and national leader in STEM and systemic change leadership in higher education. She has also served as a leader at universities in two other systems of higher education, the California State University (CSU) system and the University of Wisconsin (UW) system. She served as a faculty member and campus leader, assistant chair, associate dean, and director of a STEM education center at Cal Poly, San Luis Obispo; as dean of the College of Science and Mathematics at California State University, Fresno; and as interim provost at California State University, Chico. She then served as provost and executive vice chancellor for academic affairs at the University of Wisconsin – Whitewater. In 2006-7, she was an American Council on Education (ACE) Fellow.

She also served as the executive director of Project Kaleidoscope (PKAL) at the Association of American Colleges & Universities (AAC&U) in Washington, DC. In this position, she led multi-campus national initiatives focused on improving undergraduate STEM education and national faculty leadership programs with funding from the United States Department of Education and several philanthropic foundations. She is also a co-founder of CRUSE, the Coalition for Reform in Undergraduate STEM Education, which is a consortium of seven national associations focused on fostering national collaborations for student success in STEM. For her work in STEM higher education, she was elected as a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).

She has over 30 publications on topics ranging from undergraduate research to systemic change and leadership, as well as several scientific publications and patents. She is co-author of the Change Leadership Toolkit (2023) and Shared Leadership in Higher Education (2021). Her work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and others. She has raised over $10 million in federal and private funds to support research and educational initiatives. She regularly leads workshops, webinars, and keynote addresses on systemic change and leadership to campuses, associations, state systems, and at national conferences.

Elrod holds a Ph.D. in Genetics from the University of California, Davis and an undergraduate degree in Biological Sciences from California State University, Chico where she also served as President of the Associated Students, Inc. (ASI). After completing her PhD, she held a postdoctoral fellowship at Novozymes, Inc. in Davis, California.